Tape Trail

Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

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RE: Pioneer CT-93 Compared to Tandberg 3014A

Posted by Braxus on January 3, 2012 at 19:11:29:
And yet more comments:

"As I've said many times, for me, the Dragon is the far superior deck. It is the most musical sounding cassette deck I've heard and I've heard Tandbergs as well.

Of course, I can only speak for my set of ears. But my ears have made a nice living for me and I've been involved with music since I was 2 years old. -Jazzjene"

"Rather than define 'the best" I choose to argue that Nakamichi made different decks for different applications and different customers. We benefit because we can choose the best fit. Both ZXL decks and the Limited are extrordinary. These are cassette decks that perform as well as a Revox A77 at 7 1/2 ips, including headroom! Bass is flat down to 6 or 8 Hz. I've measured treble flat to 27kHz at -10dB. The ZXL decks are designed to be "auto everything" much like the CR7, but adapt to odd tape formulations (BASF, FeCr) effortlessly. They will record flat with both SA and SA-X rather than forcing a choice.
Frankly I'm happy with any classic mechanism whether it is DD or belt, or a hybrid. While the BX 300/ MR1 and CR7 are capable of excellent performance, Nakamichi intended these decks to be second tier to the Dragon and ZXL decks. If lowest possible flutter is your #1 priority, choose a classic. Each of the mechanical variations has its own distinctive flutter, but for 99.5% of us we may measure the differences but cannot hear them.
Are the ZXL decks "worth it"? Everyone I've communicated with says "yes". I think the sound improvements verge on subjective feelings rather than easy to identify performance shortcommings.- Nacdoc"

"I spoke to a couple of real Nak technicians about it, and they all agreed that this was THE one to have. The best of the best, as far as they were concerned. -Bigerik"

"I've never had my hands on one of these (I'd love to, but I'd have to find a screaming deal on one to consider it). But I seem to recall NakDoc saying one time that this was the best sounding machine that he's ever come across. -Goldear"

So as I said before- no one can agree on this perticular deck. I get more nods for the Dragon though then the 1000ZXL.